Let’s face it: Traditional musicals are often as ridiculous as they are sublime. The acting can be schmaltzy, the singing too precious, and people bursting into conversational song for no apparent reason is just plain weird, when you think about it.

And then there are shows about the kind of music regular people play on back porches and in bars. “Woody Guthrie’s American Song,” now playing at the Colorado Shakespeare Festival in Boulder, clearly falls into the latter camp.

Twenty years after first staging this celebration of the life and music of a true American folk hero, writer/director Peter Glazer has been lured to Boulder to re-create his powerful show. With our current economic woes, a show about a man who sang about the struggles of regular folks during the Great Depression could not be more timely.

The show opens with a cacophony of speaking voices, the five members of the ensemble representing the way Guthrie said he got his songs from the people of this country. As the voices slowly blend to emerge into the harmonies of “Hard Travelin’,” we hear the voices of millions of the downtrodden and the hopeless come together into the razor’s edge of this amazing artist. As Guthrie said, “I borrowed my words from you.”

Guthrie’s songs almost always contain threads of heartache and righteous anger, but also hope and humor, and Glazer has built all of these into the show, especially the stories told between songs. Thankfully, Glazer instructed his trained singers not to prettify the songs too much, to just belt it out without the frippery of musical theater. Guthrie was rustic and rough, and the people he sang to and about were, as well.

That’s not to say the singing isn’t beautiful. Sam Misner dons Woody’s dusty hat first, singing with a bit of a rasp and a grittiness that resemble Guthrie’s own. When Lisa Asher and Megan Pearl Smith join in, along with Daver Morrison and Matt Mueller (the latter two also portray Guthrie at various times) it is unerringly a thing of beauty. Mueller’s bright tenor/baritone and the joy he brings to the jokes and tales Guthrie tells inject the show with much-needed moments of lightness.

But Guthrie’s lyrics are heartfelt and bursting with empathy for people who had it a lot tougher than we do today. Asher and Smith sing “Ludlow Massacre” over an almost tribal beat tapped out on acoustic instruments, a song about a miners strike in 1914, when the governor of Colorado ordered the National Guard to assist a private army of mining-company thugs in slaughtering men, women and children while they slept.

When they lament the children who died in tents that were doused in kerosene and set ablaze, or were cut down by Gatling guns as they tried to flee, if you don’t feel tears forming in your eyes or at least a shiver up your spine, it’s possible that you are no longer in possession of a soul.

The four additional musicians who take the stage, playing an eye-popping assortment including guitars, piano, upright bass, banjo, mandolin and harmonica, are equally talented.

One complaint, and it’s purely technical: The sound board operator needs to get a little bolder with the microphones. While the director’s intent is surely to keep the sound as close to a true blending of acoustic instruments and unassisted voices, Morrison’s rich bass voice was mostly lost in the mix. On opening night some people in the balcony said they couldn’t make out a single word he sang.

In another age, in another country, Woody Guthrie would already have been canonized as a saint. Through his music and words he did as much for the hungry and the hopeless as a dozen Mother Teresas, feeding their souls and giving them the spiritual and emotional sustenance they needed to get them through another day, another hour, another minute. We are lucky to have this talented group tell his story here.

Ben Platt, who more than three years ago spoke the words and sang the music of “Dear Evan Hansen” for the first time, going on to win the Tony Award in June for best actor in a musical, will leave the celebrated musical in the fall, the show’s producers announced Monday.